Infinix's new Hot 8 phone comes with a price tag of Rs 6,999 in India. We've put the phone through its paces, and here is our Infinix Hot 8 review.

In the past few months, Infinix has launched quite a few phones in the sub-Rs 10,000 segment in India. While the Smart 3 Plus was unveiled with triple rear cameras, the Hot 7 Pro made its debut with a 6GB RAM model. The brand has been trying to make its mark in the highly competitive phone market. And with the new Infinix Hot 8, the company is aiming to disrupt it. The new device not only manages to offer a 6.5-inch notched screen, but also a 5,000mAh battery and triple cameras without costing a whole lot of money. At Rs 6,999, will this be enough to compete with stiff competition from Chinese players? We’ve put the new phone through its paces, and here is our Infinix Hot 8 review.

Design, Display

The latest Infinix Hot 8 smartphone with drop notch display looks like any other budget smartphone from the front. The device is built out of plastic, and features a generic design. The company did try to spice things up with gradient paint jobs. The phone comes in four color options – Quetzal Cyan, Cosmic Purple, Shark Grey and Midnight Black. We got a Quetzal Cyan review unit that looks nice. But, the glossy back picks up fingerprints easily. The phone is not as slippery as the looks suggest though.

Something that many users will appreciate on the phone is the multi-card slot, which includes dedicated slots for SIM cards and a microSD card. Infinix has added a micro-USB port at the bottom, that is par for the course at this price point. The big display makes it a bit difficult for one-hand use. Moreover, reaching out to the rear-mounted fingerprint scanner is a bit difficult too. The same is not the case with side buttons.

The Infinix Hot 8, which costs Rs 6,999, offers a 6.5-inch screen with 20:9 aspect ratio, which a lot of users will love. The phone achieves a screen-to-body ratio of over 90.3 percent. It is worth noting that no other brand is offering such a big display phone at the same price. Its color reproduction is decent, but with an HD+ resolution, the display isn’t the sharpest around. The panel has a peak brightness of 450 nits, which we found to be adequate for the most part. Notably, there is no option to change the color temperature or saturation levels of the display to suit your liking.

Also Read

Performance and software

The smartphone draws its power from a MediaTek Helio P22 chipset, which you will mostly find in any other phone at this price point. The company is offering the phone in 4GB RAM option. It comes with only 64GB storage model, which is more than adequate for an entry-level phone as well as impressive given the price point. Moreover, you can expand that further via the microSD slot.

The Hot 8 offers basic-level performance. Multitasking on this phone is not that great. We noticed that the phone often restarts a game minutes after jumping between apps. In addition, large apps also take time to load. Casual games like Subway Surfers, and Candy Crush ran smoothly. But a few graphically intensive games like PUBG Mobile took a while to start, and it was set to its low graphics settings by default. It is also worth noting that we didn’t witness any overheating, even when playing heavy titles.

Infinix ships its new phone with XOS 5.0 running on top of Android 9 Pie. Firstly, a bunch of unnecessary apps comes preinstalled with the phone, which includes PHX Browser, PalmStore, Opera browser, ShareChat and more. Thankfully, you can uninstall some of the apps from the phone.

There are a few useful features too. The smart panel is a useful addition, which lets you access apps and action shortcuts anywhere. The WhatsApp mode could also benefit users when in roaming as it blocks mobile data’s access to other apps, excluding the messaging app. Furthermore, a few might not like the Intelligent Voice Broadcast feature, as it can not only read out the weather news, but also your WhatsApp, Facebook and personal messages. Apart from these, there is Digital Wellbeing, Bike mode, a Freezer app, and gestures are also available.

Also Read

Camera performance

As is the current trend, the Hot 8 offers more than two cameras at the back. The setup includes a 13-megapixel primary primary camera sensor with an f/1.8 aperture and phase detection autofocus (PDAF). There is a 2-megapixel secondary sensor as well for depth sensing. The company has also added a dedicated low-light sensor, which is claimed to deliver more details and brighter low light images. Besides, the phone’s camera app is quite generic. The AI-backed cameras offer support for modes like Beauty, Bokeh, Panorama, AR Shot and more. But, the camera app lacks a Pro mode.

Photos captured during the daylight look decent for a phone in this price range, although it was inconsistent. The photos have sufficient details, and sharpness. The color reproduction is good enough, however, it fails to capture the reds accurately. When it comes to macro shots, the handset managed decent separation between subjects and their backgrounds. However, the very bright parts of the photo tend to get overexposed.

It is important to note that the HDR mode doesn’t work well, and in fact, you get much better colors with the standard photo mode. There is also a bokeh mode, which lets you set the level of blur before capturing a photo. The bokeh effect isn’t consistent as the device fails to add blur in a few parts. In daylight, the Infinix Hot 8 locks focus quickly, but it takes time to lock focus in the absence of sufficient light. Furthermore, the low-light photos are not that bad. There is a quad-LED flash on the rear side of the phone, which can help brighten scenes and offer slightly better photos.

The selfies we took using the Hot 8 are usable for social media purpose. The images captured in daylight have very minimal details and sharpness. Moreover, there is also a beautification mode, which you can use to get rid of blemishes on your face. You can even select the level of beautification. However, on high levels, it goes overboard with smoothing skin and the selfies look artificial.

Battery

Battery is one of the key requirements and several brands are now offering phones with an enormous 5,000mAh battery. Similarly, the Infinix Hot 8 also packs the same cell under the hood. But one thing to note here is that it is the only device under the Rs 7,000 price bracket to offer a 5,000mAh unit. With this phone, you can get nearly two day’s of battery life with moderate usage, including very light gaming, messaging, calling and binge-watching. The battery life on Infinix’s new smartphone is impressive, but the phone lacks support for fast charging, which is quite understandable considering the price. This also means the standard charger will take a lot of time to top up the big battery completely from scratch.

Should you buy the Infinix Hot 8?

At Rs 6,999, the Infinix Hot 8 phone offers most of the features that users care about. You get a long-lasting 5,000mAh battery with this handset. There is also a whopping 6.5-inch display as well as 4GB RAM + 64GB storage model at a price point where no other brand is offering the same. Furthermore, the phone can capture decent enough shots in ideal lighting situations. The entry-level phone also comes with up-to-date software.

A few things to note here is that you don’t get fast charging support to top up the big battery, the performance is also basic level, and the panel supports HD+ resolution. However, we can’t really complain about these as the phone offers enough for the asking price. Overall, if all you want is a long-lasting battery, a big-screen phone that performs the basic tasks well, the Infinix Hot 8 is a good deal.

The handset will be available for purchase via Flipkart. It is important to note that the device will be available for Rs 7,999 starting November. The current price is an introductory offer, which will expire on October 30. For Rs 7,999, customers can consider buying the Realme 3i phone if they want a much better camera and the overall performance.